Another former FourWinds Logistics official pleads guilty

Published 5:21 pm, Thursday, December 8, 2016

Former FourWinds Logistics Comptroller Laura Jacobs pleaded guilty Thursday to her role in a conspiracy to defraud investors in the oil field services company — a business with close ties to state Sen. Carlols Uresti.

Jacobs is the third ex-FourWinds official who has pleaded guilty to a single felony county of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Each faces up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and as much as a $250,000 fine.

FourWinds, the San Antonio company that traded sand used in fracking to extract oil and gas from shale rock, went bankrupt in August 2015 with more than $14 million in debt. The company’s demise sparked allegations from investors that their money was misspent on items unrelated to the business and triggered an FBI investigation.

Uresti provided legal services to FourWinds and acted as its outside general counsel for four or five months in late 2014. In August, he said he had been contacted by the FBI “as a witness” in an investigation of FourWinds and its former CEO, Stan Bates.

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Jacobs, in December 2014, emailed an investor a spreadsheet that falsely showed that the investor’s money was used to purchase sand, according to a document outlining the charge. It didn’t detail how the money was actually spent.

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